Most of those I know on the Left are cautiously hopeful about what can be done under the new Democratic majority government.

Of course, I may have a skewed perspective. Other than the endless blazing of wildfires and the earthquakes and being surrounded by asshats and bigots, my little part of the globe is a slice of heaven. The greater SF Bay Area is home to some of the most progressive people in Congress, and we are – well, I am – fiercely proud of them all. Barbara Boxer, Barbara Lee, Doris Matsui, George Miller, Lynn Woolsey, Nancy Pelosi, Anna Eshoo, Jackie Speier, Michael Honda and Zoe Lofgren all represent districts nearby, while the only openly Agnostic in the whole of the Federal government, Pete Stark, is my local Representative.

Not a uniform bunch these, typical diversity of the Left, and hardly lockstep thinkers, but there is universally apparent among them a change in tone, a new sense of focus, a quickening of the step and of the pulse; there are heightened expectations, a rousing belief that at long last real Progressive change is possible.

Not hopey-changey delusional, this bunch, but practical and seasoned politicians who are for the first time in a long time openly eager and upbeat in their assessment of the possible, and that is a very welcome change. We have a list of things that need doing out here, the same list as the rest of Progressive America, that’s nothing new. What has changed is the characterization of that list; it has shifted from What Needs Doing to How To Do It and that is a major adjustment. Instead of theorizing, plans are being laid and forces are being mustered.

That all of these representatives have safe seats and did not have to campaign much to keep them is, IMNSHO, a damn good thing. That security gave them the opportunity to spend quality time with their constituents before the election, listening to those whom they represent rather than being insulated by the distancing that comes with making campaign speeches and endless rounds of fundraising.

Each of them reached out in different ways; among other things, Barbara Lee held a public discussion session with Robert Reich on the economy as well as many small venue open-discussion meetings, while Boxer gave a series of lectures with Q&A at large and small businesses and schools all around the Bay Area. George Miller spent a lot of time listening to educators and parents groups with an eye to finally fixing No Child Left Behind, his pet that went astray, as did Jackie Speier. Stark held a town-hall style presentation and discussion focused on the economy, with speakers representing local business, banking and consumer advocacy who made formal presentations and then took a barrage of questions from attendees, most of it from very unhappy people.

The overriding sense, from all of them, is that this election brings a chance to make things happen with a Progressive slant but that it will take coordinated effort to be heard as well as great determination and enormous effort to keep Republicans from controlling the media message. The MSM infatuation with Obama will come to an end the day he takes office, and the narrative then will be all about how the Republican minority is bravely saving the country from doom at the hands of spendthrift Liberals. Without swift action and relentless hammering of the truth, the MSM will swing public opinion back towards a regressive stance and perpetuate the conflict on which they thrive.

Next week’s Lame Duck session may provide a snapshot glimpse of that future. What had seemed a promising arrangement between congressional Democrats and the Bush administration over passage of a $150 billion Main Street stimulus package, a compromise worked out after the Trillion Dollar Bailout was shown to be the wrong approach, has now come a cropper. The measure included extending unemployment benefits, increased food stamp funding, infrastructure construction money that would have quickly provided tens of thousands of decent jobs, aid packages to the states for help with a whole range of basic services, and money – with strings – for domestic car makers.

Everyone was on board including Bernanke and Paulson, but Bush has decided to maneuver for advantage by making approval of the deeply flawed Columbian trade deal his price for signing the already agreed-upon stimulus bill. For BushCo, making money for Big Business at the further expense of American workers is more important than helping American unemployed and working poor.

So for the last week, along with jockeying for position on committee assignments and leadership offices, the whole Democratic caucus has had to try and strategize what – and even if – they can get in the way of a real stimulus bill past the recalcitrant Republican minority in the Senate and signed into law. The unemployment and state aid portions likely have enough votes in the House to override a veto, but nobody wants to stay in session for that long and there probably aren’t enough votes in the Senate anyway.

One last time, it may well be Bush’s way or the highway unless Republican senators can be frightened into cooperation. How the media cover this struggle will give us a clue as to how they intend to drive public opinion in the coming years.

Even in the new 111th congress, barring some set of miracles in Minnesota and Georgia and a sudden unlikely eruption of humility from Joe Lieberman, the Republican Senate caucus is planning obstruct everything Democrats propose. The BlueDogs, not as numerically important as they thought they would be, will still try and be the controlling entity in the House and make passing Progressive legislation as difficult as they can.

Managing the Dogs, and persuading a couple of Republican Senators to come along as well, will be difficult to achieve by threat alone. What is more likely productive is framing an argument for Progressive change in terminology the obdurate can understand, an argument from a conservative fiscal viewpoint made in the language of business.

I wrote about this use of business language here, and for background please refer to that post. In short, Progressives need to stop talking about expenditure items like unemployment insurance and Social Security and health care and education as “benefits” or “entitlements” and start calling them “investments”. The one view casts them as Cost, something business managers generally want to avoid, while the other presents them as Investment Opportunity which is something any decent business person is always seeking. Cost is bad, Investment Opportunity is good; it really does need to be kept that simple.

In the short term, the kinds of issues that can perhaps be addressed in this Lame Duck session like extending unemployment benefits, boosting food stamps, state government aid and infrastructure construction all provide a positive and rapid Return On Investment for the overall economy; that is, for every dollar spent more than a dollar in Gross Domestic Product is generated in the first year and those returns are continuing, extending out for the indefinite future. Further tax cuts, on the other hand, provide a modest Return at best and in most cases are not worth doing from an overall economic benefit viewpoint.

Application of this concept as a means of prioritizing economic policy is shown here in an excerpt from congressional testimony given to the House last June by economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s, hardly a DFH sprung from some Socialist hotbed of irresponsible thinking.

This information was generally neglected when it first appeared, but over the last few weeks it has become widely circulated within the Progressive congressional caucus and its power is becoming appreciated. Framed within this terminology, it is clearly apparent that "doing well by doing good" is not just possible but mandatory.

If we are to manage the economy responsibly, then investments of public money must be directed in such a way that the Return on those investments is greater than the cost. What works, for the benefit of all, is not the false promise of Trickle Down but the economically sound approach of Bubble Up. Or, as I like to think of it: Keynes rules, Friedman drools.

Longer term, but not too much longer, subjects like education, health care and ecological engineering need to be framed in a similar manner. Universal decent health care and universal quality education must be shown to have a positive Return On Investment, evidence that a healthy and educated citizenry will also be a productive and profitable citizenry.

Intuitively obvious to the Liberal mind, of course, but remember who we’re dealing with here. These are people who cannot envision any reality beyond the bottom line on a balance sheet, and have little sense about how to manage a business profitably beyond slashing cost by eliminating workers and reducing taxes.

They will have to be educated, shown how an investment will reap a worthwhile profit, and Progressives will have to learn the language and conceptual skills necessary to communicate these principles effectively. It is only on the basis of dollars and cents that a Progressive agenda can be sold to a center-conservative Administration and a center-conservative Congress and, frankly, a center-conservative nation.

While Progressives tend to view these sorts of issues – properly – from within a moral framework, arguments from decency and goodness have not been functional approaches because appealing to a banker’s heart or conscience does no good; they don’t have either one. Appeal to greed and their pocketbook, however, and we will have all the eager partners we need.